My Top 25 Horror/Monster Films, Part III (10-1)

10. The Thing (1982)

Dir: John Carpenter
Running Time: 108 min.
The Thing was largely criticized when it came for being  overly violent and too gory, yet compared to the horror films of the last decade it is pretty tame. More importantly, the gore effects in The Thing actually serve a function to the overall story; the titular creature survives by assimilating the creatures around it. The audience never truly realizes the sheer horror of the Thing, until it is shown trying to assimilate sled dogs that are around it, and later when one of the humans is revealed to be a part of the Thing. The real tension in the film doesn't lie in its gruesome effects, but on the idea that the characters (and the audience) can never be certain as to who is human and who has been assimilated. This one of the few remakes that improves upon the original film, The Thing From Another World.  This is largely due to the fact that it’s more faithful to novella both films are based on, “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell. Lots of scenes from Carpenter’s film are taken directly from the novella, like the famous blood test scene.

9.  The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Dir: James Whale
Running Time: 75 min.
It’s often a tough choice for me to decide which film I like better: Frankenstein or The Bride of Frankenstein, because both are wonderful movies. In the end, I choose Bride of Frankenstein because it’s a far more complete film. The original Frankenstein sets up a love triangle that never pays off; it is hinted throughout that Henry Frankenstein’s fiancée, Elizabeth, will inevitably end up with his best friend, Victor, but this subplot gets abandoned by the film’s end. In the sequel Victor is completely forgotten about and Henry is allowed to create another monster with his demonic mentor, Dr. Pretorious (the wonderful Ernest Thesiger). Boris Karloff once again plays the monster in a sympathetic light and the ending in which his “bride” rejects him is truly saddening.  Once Karloff relinquished the role of the monster, it essentially was relegated to a walking prop, occasionally showing up at the end of future films to stumble around the set for a few minutes before everything went up in flames.

8. Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Dir: Roman Polanski
Running Time: 136 min.
Rosemary’s Baby is a wonderful piece of misdirection: the first few minutes play like a cheesy day time soap; two newlyweds get an apartment in New York and are hoping to add a child into the mix. Then surely, but slowly everything starts to unravel, until it is revealed that the weird old couple next door are actually Satan worshipers and Rosemary’s husband is in on the plot to impregnate Rosemary with the devil’s child. In lesser hands this film would be completely laughable, but director Polanski builds tension with the power of mere suggestion.  In one famous shot, the character of Minnie (Ruth Gordon) is seen talking on the phone in her bedroom, but her face is blocked by the doorway; it’s a seemingly normal scene, but the blocking suggests something isn't quite right. Also, because the film is largely seen from Rosemary’s point of view, there are a few times where the audience starts to question her sanity; is there really a conspiracy going on or is all in her head? In fact, there are many people who claim that the film’s film scene is in fact, a hallucination caused by the stress Rosemary has put herself through. I don’t agree with the interpretation, but these ambiguities are what make Rosemary’s Baby such a classic horror film.

7. Island of Lost Souls (1932)

Dir: Erle C. Kenton
Running Time: 70 min.
Island of Lost Souls was the first adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel “The Island of Dr. Moreau” and it’s by far the best, even though the author himself hated it. In the novel Moreau is seen in a more kindly light, whereas he’s completely diabolical in the film version. Charles Laughton is a magnificent as the maniacal Moreau, who through vivisection hopes to accelerate the evolution of animals by transforming them into humans.  Bela Lugosi is terrific in a small, but memorable role as the Sayer of the Law.

6. Evil Dead II (1987)

Dir: Sam Raimi
Running Time: 84 min.
Evil Dead II is simply a joy to sit through. The first Evil Dead was a straight forward horror film filled with lots of gore and Bruce Campbell stumbling through the scenery as the cowardly Ash. Evil Dead II takes the same premise, but adds humor to the mix to make it one of the more memorable films of the 80s. It’s hard to dislike such a silly movie like this, hell, even Roger Ebert gave it a good review. Yet, despite the humor, there still are a few genuine scares scattered throughout, like the sudden emergence of the possessed Ed, or when the corpse of Henrietta bursts from the cellar floor. However, the highlight has to been Ash’s continuous battle with his possessed severed hand.

5. The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)

Dir: Roger Corman
Running Time: 80 min.
Vincent Price is one of my all time favorite actors; so it’s a sure bet that at least one of his film would be included in my top five. I decided on The Pit and the Pendulum largely due to the fact that it was the first Vincent Price film I ever saw, at the tender age of six. It was one of the first films my dad recorded on our new VCR, and I remember staying up late to watch it with him, my sister, and my cousin Mike, but not being able to finish it, because it creeped me out. It’s still rather chilling nearly 26 years later; especially the idea of being buried alive. The film presents this motif twice: When, in a flashback, Nicholas’ (Vincent Price) dad is shown interring his mother alive by building a wall of bricks around her, and later when it is revealed Nicholas wife was buried alive, which drives him to the brink of insanity.  And who can ever forget the ending, with an insane Price leering on as poor Francis (John Kerry) is strapped to a table while the pendulum swings ever closer to his body.

4. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

Dir: Don Siegel
Running Time: 80 min.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers doesn’t contain too many effects shots, but it’s far more effective than the many effects laden monstrosities that have dominated the horror genre in the last two decades. The film moves at a fast pace, largely due to the fact that the characters are constantly on the run. The premise is genuinely frightening:  the people in our community are not who we think them to be and, are in fact, duplicates lacking in the emotion department.  The most horrifying shot is when Miles (Kevin McCarthy) kisses Becky (Dana Wynter) and realizes she has been replaced due to the dead look in her eyes. A lot of political subtext has been attached to the film; there are some people who claim that it is anti-communist, while other are adamant it is anti- McCarthy, but regardless of its intentions (or lack thereof) it succeeds as a scary sci-fi/horror film.

3. Psycho (1960)

Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
Running Time: 109 min.
What’s amazing about Psycho is that despite the fact that I went in knowing both of its twists (the heroine get killed halfway through in a shower, the reveal that Mrs. Bates is actually her son Norman in drag), I was still drawn in by the narrative. The film succeeds because the audience relates to the character of Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), which makes even more shocking and appalling when she is killed off right before our eyes forty five minutes into the film. If there is a flaw in Psycho it is the fact that the second half of the film is far less compelling, largely due to the fact that Marion’s sister Lila (Vera Miles) is not a particularly likable character. However, Psycho still remains a favorite due to its wonderful set pieces:  Marion being stalked by a highway patrolman, the shower scene; Norman (Anthony Perkins) cleaning up after his mother, the murder of detective Arbogast (Martin Balsam), and the reveal at the end. If you have hard time appreciating Psycho, then I suggest you watch the many imitations that followed it (William Castle’s Homicidal, I Saw What You Did, and Hammer’s Paranoiac and Nightmare); I guarantee these minor films will make realize what a genius Hitchcock truly was.

2. King Kong (1933)

Dir: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack
Running Time: 100 min.
The first time I saw King Kong was when I was twelve years old. I was stayed up until three in the morning on a Saturday night to finally catch a film I had heard so much about throughout my childhood. Practically everyone knows about King Kong a top the Empire State Building, whether they have seen the film or not. The first forty minutes of the film effectively builds up to Kong’s first appearance, and I remember being excited that I was finally going to see Kong, BUT when he made his appearance…I LAUGHED! I thought to myself, “Wow! These effects are horrible. Kong looks like he’s made of clay.” However, as the film progressed, a funny thing happened….. I stopped thinking of Kong as a dated special effect and began to think of him as a genuine character. King Kong is a highly entertaining film, but it’s most amazing achievement is that somehow Willis O’ Brien and his team of animator were able to inject a personality and life into an 18 inch model covered with rabbit fur. Kong is  a fully realized character; he goes through a whole array of emotions throughout the course of the film and, despite being the villain, his death at the end is truly heart breaking. King Kong is one of the most influential films ever made and it’s a tribute to directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack that the film is just as popular today as it was eighty years ago.

1. Jaws (1975)

Running Time: 124 min.
Dir: Steven Spielberg
Jaws, like Psycho, has inspired countless imitations (and three unnecessary sequels) and once you have seen any of them, it makes you realize just how wonderful the original truly is. Jaws is the kind of the film that in lesser hands could have been absolutely dreadful, but director Steven Spielberg builds the suspense by never allowing the audience a good look at the shark until the film is two thirds over. The icing on the cake is that the characters are extremely likable and are capable of having genuine conversations; the most memorable being Quint (Robert Shaw) recounting surviving the U.S.S. Indianapolis sinking. It’s a scene that’s not necessarily relevant to the plot, but it adds depth to the character of Quint and explains why he’s so obsessed with killing this one shark.  It’s a highly entertaining and, in my opinion, one of the greatest films ever made. 

My Top 25 Horror/Monster Film, Part II (20-11)

20. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Dir: Tobe Hooper
Running Time: 84 min.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one of the most unnerving films ever made; it is completely unrelenting in its horror and never allows the audience a moment to breathe. You never feel comfortable around the main characters, because they are often at each other’s throats.  Franklin, despite being in a wheel chair, is completely unsympathetic and is often a huge burden on Sally and her friends.  Despite it’s rather gruesome title, the film is fairly tame in its use of gore; most of the horror is implied, rather than shown in full detail. The 2003 remake with Jessica Biel tried to replicate the look of the original film, but failed in that in tried too hard in making Leatherface a sympathetic character by giving him a painful back story. In the original, it is implied that the family turned to cannibalism largely due to economic factors (the closing down of the slaughter house, the scarcity of gas). It was a nice, subtle touch that was completely lacking from the remake, which went for the whole, “Leatherface was picked on when he was a kid, which is why he hacks up people.” 

 

19. Horror of Dracula (1958)

Dir. Terence Fisher
Running Time: 80 min.
Horror of Dracula is far and away my favorite Dracula film, largely because it moves at a very swift pace. The 1931 Dracula starring Bela Lugosi has a great opening in Transylvania, but comes to a complete halt once it switches locations to London.  The actors just stand around, read their lines, and wait for their cue to exit the scene; it’s like watching a stage play.  Christopher Lee as Dracula is a commanding presence, while Peter Cushing is wonderful as Van Helsing. Cushing’s no nonsense approach to the role really sells the threat of Dracula, while Lee is menacing regardless of what he is doing, be it baring his fangs at his potential victims or just walking into the frame.

18. Black Christmas (1974) 

Dir: Bob Clark
Running Time: 98 min.
Black Christmas has one of the most interesting gimmicks in history; a horror film in which you never actually see the killer. It’s this very ambiguity that makes it such a creepy film, the audience is never given a back story on who the killer is and why he is stalking a house of sorority girls, so they have to rely on their imaginations to fill in the blanks. However, despite never seeing the killer, the audience is still never given a chance to fully relax, because they are forced to listen to the killer; he calls up the sorority and makes obscene phone calls; after he kills a victim he laughs for what seems to be an eternity.  The film was remade in 2006 and (as is the case for most horror remakes) the body count increased while the very little was left to the imagination; in this case the killer was given an elaborate back story and looked like a cast off from The Hills Have Eyes.

17. Poltergeist (1982)

Dir: Tobe Hooper
Running Time: 112 min.
Poltergeist has two scenes that still creep me out:
1)  The opening shot, which begins on a close up a television signing off and then follows the family dogs as it walks room to room. Nothing happens onscreen, but it is completely unnerving, mainly due to the fact that it shot from the point of view of a child. This scene establishes that the family is being watched by an unseen force and that it’s only a matter of time before it reveals itself to the Freelings.

2) The attack on Robbie by the freaky clown doll. This scene is set up beautifully; first there is a shot of the clown doll sitting on a chair facing Robbie while he’s in bed. Then it cuts to Robbie as he hides his head beneath his blanket. Then he pulls down the blanket to see if the clown is still there, only to find to his horror that it has disappeared. He then checks to see if it is hiding under the bed and when he gets back up, the clown doll is standing right behind him and proceeds to attack him. I've seen this scene numerous times and it gets me every time.

16. House of Wax (1953)

Dir: Andre de Toth
Running Time: 88 min.
House of Wax is a remake of the 1933 Warner Brothers film Mystery of the Wax Museum and is a vast improvement. The original film is laden with comedy relief; the main protagonist is a wisecracking blonde reporter (Glenda Farrell) who is trying to solve the mystery of all the disappearing corpses from the city morgue and her research leads her to a Wax Museum in New York, where her roommate is the mad sculptor’s next target.  The remake does away with this character and focuses more on the mad sculptor’s (Vincent Price) attempt to recreate his old Wax Museum (that was burned down by his greedy partner, hoping to cash in on the insurance) in London by using the cadavers of murder victims. It’s biggest claim to fame is that it was shot in 3-D and, having seen it in 3-D, it’s one of the few films that actually works, largely because the director Andre de Toth fully embraces the gimmick, whether it’s relevant to the story or not. The most famous 3-D scene is the paddle ball man, who for no reason other than to show off the effect, continuously hits rubber balls at the screen, while telling the audience all about the wonders of the wax museum. It’s hokey, but it is a lot of fun and Vincent Price is in top form as the mad sculptor Jarrod.

15. Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Dir: George A. Romero
Running Time: 96 min.
Night of the Living Dead is almost relentless in its horror, because you never get the feeling that the characters are safe from the terror lurking outside. They don’t board themselves inside a house, because they are trying to find a solution, but rather out of a fear.  Even when the zombies are off screen, you get the feeling that it’s all going to come crashing down sooner rather than later. This is largely due to the fact that when the characters aren’t fighting the zombies they are at odds with one another. Harry Cooper thinks its best that they all go into the cellar and try to wait out the night, while Ben (the character the audience roots for) is adamant they remain in the living room, where they at least have a fighting chance if the zombies should break in. However, the irony of the film is that Ben survives the night by locking himself in the cellar, after the shit has hit the fan.  It’s a film that plays with the audience’s expectations, where we think one thing is going to happen, only to get blindsided by something else; the two romantic leads are killed in explosions and their remains gets gobbled up by the zombies, Helen is viciously murdered by her daughter, and Ben shoots an unarmed Harry.  It’s a disturbing film and is hard to shake off after having seen it. 

14. The Mummy (1959)

Dir: Terence Fisher
Running Time: 88 min.
Christopher Lee is my favorite Mummy actor of all time, with apologies to the great Boris Karloff. What I like about Lee’s mummy is that he is nothing but sheer, brute strength...a force of a nature to be reckoned with.  Boris Karloff’s Mummy (Ardeth Bay) used black magic to strike terror into the hearts of his enemies, but was physically weak. When Universal revived the series in the 1940s, starting with The Mummy’s Hand, the character of Kharis plodded through the scenery and never seemed a believable threat, despite the look of horror on the actor’s faces. The problem was that Kharis only had one good leg and one good arm; his victims could have easily gotten out of harm’s way had they just walked at a brisk pace, instead of just gawking at him like complete morons. Lee’s Mummy is a sight to behold; he smashes through doors, bends prison bars, and in one case gets impaled by a poker and still keeps on coming.   

13. Halloween (1978)

Dir: John Carpenter
Running Time: 90 min.
The creepiest aspect of Halloween is the idea that a seemingly normal kid for a normal family could just one day flip out and murder his teenage sister. The film never explains why this happened, but the implication is terrifying. The horrible Rob Zombie remake tries to fill in the blanks by giving Michael Myers an over the top back story; he comes from a dysfunctional family, his mother is a stripper and his dad is an abusive redneck that is stuck in a wheel chair. It’s a pretty needless opening and really doesn't give you much insight into the character of Michael Myers.  The original film left things to the imagination, while Zombie’s version does a full assault on the viewer’s senses, there’s nothing ambiguous about his film. There’s really nothing more I can say about Carpenter’s film that hasn't been said before, so I will use the awful pun from the 2003 making of documentary, it’s a “cut above the rest.”

12. Carnival of Souls (1962)

Dir: Herk Harvey
Running Time: 84 min.
Carnival of Souls was the only full length commercial film Herk Harvey ever did and it’s a good one.  An emotionally aloof woman finds herself drawn to a crumbling lake side a pavilion, while being stalked by a pale faced man. The film is amazingly effective in its simplicity; in one scene the heroine finds herself wandering the streets of Salt Lake City while citizen’s fail to acknowledge her existence, she literally becomes a lost soul.  In another jarring sequence, the heroine is driving at night, only to find a face staring at her through the passenger window. It’s these little moments that make the film so eerie. If they film were remade now a days, they would probably be CG ghoulies run amok, mutilating the people closest to the heroine as she decides what her next course of action  should be.

11. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932)

Dir: Rouben Mamoulian
Running Time: 96 min.
There have been many adaptations of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but Rouben Mamoulian’s is by far the best. This is largely due to Mamoulian’s imaginative direction; the first transformation is done in a long continuous take, the camera never leaves Jekyll as he slowly begins to change. This simple effect baffled film historians for years, it was until the 1990s (and after Mamoulian’s death) that it was figured out how it was done, let’s just say it involved lighting and filters. Fredric March is terrific as the suffering Dr. Jekyll and the feral Mr.Hyde.  As the film progresses Mr. Hyde becomes increasingly more and more terrifying, at first his antics are slightly comical as he is more a prankster than a monster, but with each successive transformation he turns a tad bit darker until he’s a fully fledged homicidal maniac.

My Top 25 Horror/Monster Films, Part I (25 - 21)

There are two types of people out there: those who absolutely loathe horror and those that can’t get enough of them; I definitely fall in the latter category as a good portion of my movie collection is of the horror genre.  If you ask any person what their top ten horror films are, you would probably get a different list each time. I have done better, rather than list my top ten horror films; I have opted instead to list my top 25 horror films.  I initially was going to do a top ten list, but the more I thought of it, the more I realized that there were so many to choose form that ten just would not do. This is by no means a “GREATEST” horror films list; in fact many films on this list are more guilty pleasures than they are high quality film making  When all is said and done movies are a form of entertainment, and each of these titles are entertaining in their own sick and twisted ways. I’m a big fan of old school horror and it’s fairly apparent when you read this list; all the films were made prior to 1990. It’s not to say that there hasn't been any worthwhile horror films in the last twenty years, it’s just that very few have been memorable.  Scream is the exception, but I find it tad bit overrated. It got rave reviews by the critics for the way it “sent up” the horror genre, but it was hardly the first film to do so. Practically every a decade has a horror film parodies the conventions of the time. The little loved The Mummy’s Ghost has a scene in which a security guard is listening to a horror program on the radio, unaware that it is foreshadowing his soon to be demise.

25. Friday the 13^th, Part 2 (1981)

Dir: Steve Miner
Running Time: 87 min.

The Friday the 13^th series is one of the most critically maligned franchises in the history of cinema and justifiably so.  They are horribly contrived, extremely unoriginal in their execution, and often are cluttered with one dimensional characters that have no narrative function, except to be killed in many horrible and gruesome ways. Yet, despite all this, I absolutely love the first four Friday the 13^th films. My inner critic tells me this is wrong, yet I enjoy them nonetheless.  They are horror at its most basic: Teenagers isolated in the woods being stalked by an ax wielding maniac. It doesn't get any simpler than that and the first four Friday the 13^th films exploit this to great effect. The later entries tended to be ridiculously over the top with Jason becoming more super human as the series progressed.

  Part 2 is my favorite for a few reasons:

1)      Jason, despite his apparent resurrection from the dead, is kind of clumsy. It brings an air of realism to the series that the later films lack and it doesn't seem a mismatch when the heroine confronts him face to face at the film’s end. 

2)      Best heroine in the series.   Amy Steel (as Ginny) is far and away my favorite leading lady in the entire series. The character of Ginny is a fairly intelligent character that uses her field of study (child psychiatry) to bring down Jason. However, she also has a nice sense of humor about her, especially at the beginning when she shows up her boyfriend in front of the other camp counselors.  She’s easy to like.

3)      It strays from the norm in regards to the character of Ted (Stu Charno). Ted takes delight in playing pranks on the other counselors, which means that he is ripe for the picking. In the first Friday and the third, the prankster of the group dies fairly early in the proceeding. You spend the entire film wondering how Ted is going to get his…..BUT HE SURVIVES. Ted and other counselors go to the bar and are spared being massacred. It’s a rather nice, unexpected touch.

24. The Exorcist (1973) 

Dir: William Friedkin
Running Time: 123 min.

The Exorcist is not nearly as high on my list as it used to be; possibly because as I've gotten older it just doesn't have the same impact it did when I was a teenager.  In fact, I find the find the first half of the film far more compelling than the second half, due to its understated nature. The film is very methodical in how it slowly rules out the scientific as embraces the supernatural for Regan’s (Linda Blair) condition. In a way it’s a shame that the subtleties of the first half eventually give way to the fire and brimstone of the second, because ambiguous route might have the served the story better. Is Regan really possessed? Or is it in her mind? Are the priests really giving her an exorcism? Or is it all the power of suggestion? Still, it’s a genuinely well made film and the acting is top notch, especially Ellen Burstyn as Regan’s suffering mom.  The Exorcist is what I liked to call an “aftershock” horror film; it’s not necessarily scary while watching it, but it stays with you for quite some time. I remember a week I had watched it for the first time, I was alone in the house and kept thinking of the possessed Regan. Every time I heard a creak in the house I jumped. When I had to go upstairs to my room, I grabbed the family dog for protection. At the top of the stairs was the attic door and I was convinced something would jump out and grab me. 

23. Alien (1979) 

Dir: Ridley Scott
Running Time: 117 min.

Aliens takes “the old dark house” premise and transports it to space. There’s really nothing at all original about Alien, the premise is extremely reminiscent of the underrated 50s thriller It! The Terror From Beyond Space. However, this is one case where the “rip off” is a vast improvement over the original source.  For one thing, the production design of Alien vastly trumps It! The Terror From Beyond Space.  This is largely due to the fact that Alien had a fairly decent sized budget, while It! was bogged down by an extremely low budget.  The creature in Alien is genuinely frightening, while the creature in It! is rather silly looking when seen in full light (the filmmaker Edward L. Cahn, for the most part, does an effective job handling the creature by either shooting in shadows, or only giving us quick glimpses of it). The chest bursting sequence still packs wallop, despite the many sequels and imitations that have followed.

22. Black Sabbath (1963)

Dir: Mario Bava
Running Time: 92 min.

(SPOILERS)
Mario Bava is one of the most influential horror directors in cinema history, he essentially created the slasher film with the wonderfully ridiculous Bay of Blood, while Black Sunday is probably the definitive “witch” movie.  However, I prefer Black Sabbath, because it’s an anthology of stories that allows Bava to exercise his style and it features the great Boris Karloff, who does double duty as the narrator of the film and stars in the second story “The Wurdalak,” in which he plays a vampire.  

It should be noted that the American version complete reshuffles the order of the stories and completely alters the narrative of “The Telephone,” dropping the lesbian subtext in favor of a more supernatural explanation.  In “The Telephone” a beautiful woman receives threatening phone calls supposedly from her former boyfriend, who is behind bars. However, it is revealed an elaborate ruse by her jilted lady friend, Mary, who essentially uses the threatening calls as a way to get back together with Rosy.  After getting the phone calls, Rosy calls Mary and has her spend the night, because she doesn't feel safe alone.  The next morning Mary writes Rosy a letter confessing her guilt, only (HERE’S THE TWIST) to be strangled by Rosy's crazy ex-boyfriend, who has just escaped from prison.  The American version reedits the story so the audience never sees the reveal that it is Mary making the phone calls. Also, instead writing a confession at the end, Mary is seen writing a note that says she’s going to help Rosy find a good doctor. It deflates any tension that actually existed in the story, especially in one scene where Mary is seen brandishing a knife and looks like she's going to use it on Rosy. In the America version, it  is supposedly the ghost of Rosy's ex-boyfriend that strangles Mary, which makes little sense, because he gets killed at the end of the story. Is it possible to kill a ghost?  The American version also makes the mistakes of putting the scariest story “The Drop of Water” first, while in the Italian version is serves as a fitting climax to the movie, as each story tops the previous one.  “The Drop of Water” concerns the story of a nurse that is haunted by the corpse of a countess whose ring she has stolen. 

21. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Dir: Wes Craven
Running Time: 92 min.
The thing that strikes me about the first A Nightmare on Elm Street is that Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) is a genuinely scary villain. This largely due to the fact that Wes Craven wisely keeps Freddy in the shadows or never allows the audience to get a good look at him until the ending of the film.  This may seem trivial, after all, the villain in a horror film is supposed to be scary, so why make a big deal out of it? Well, mainly because as the series progressed Freddy went from being the villain of the piece to the wise cracking hero.  No longer did the audiences care about the fate of the teenagers, but rather they went to see whatever crazy antics Freddy had in store for them…..and laughed along with him. By the time of Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, he ceased being scary and was largely the comic relief. The absolute nadir of the series was when Freddy was shown straddling a broom, shouting, “I’ll get you my pretty!” Freddy’s Dead desperately tries to be funny, but it’s just sad reminder of how far the series had fallen.  

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)

Halloween 4?! Surely, this is a mistake. Why would you want to devote an entire review to an unnecessary sequel to a classic horror film? Why not just review the original one instead?  I tell you why, my incredulous readers, because Halloween has been written about so many times that there is really nothing more I can say to it.  Halloween 4, on the other hand, is essentially up for grabs, because despite a strong cult following, it has essentially been overlooked by the critics.  It’s also the best of all the Halloween sequels; its gore is kept to a minimum and the characters are fairly likable. It’s definitely a mixed bag, but compared to the awful horror sequels that saturated the market in the 80s, it comes off rather well. 

Despite the 4 in the title, it is actually the third film in the Michael Myers saga; Halloween III: Season of the Witch had nothing what so ever to do with the character (except for a brief clip of the first Halloween playing on the television), instead it revolved around a plot by a Druid cult to take over the world through the use of Halloween masks and a television signal, or something to that effect. As you can imagine this didn’t go over so well with the Halloween fan base and when Halloween 4 rolled along, Michael Myers was back, giving free reign to once again terrorize the small town of Haddonfield. However, the filmmakers couldn’t get Jamie Lee Curtis to return, so instead they introduced the character of Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris), the daughter of Laurie Strode (Curtis’ character from the first two Halloween films).  The filmmakers did manage to Donald Pleasence to reprise his role as the slightly crazy Dr. Sam Loomis. It must be said that Dr. Loomis is one of the most resilient heroes in cinema history; not only does he survive a stab wound, but a fiery explosion as well. At the end of Halloween II, Dr. Loomis sacrifices himself by blowing up the hospital room him and Michael Myers are trapped in. Or so it seemed, because he’s very much alive in Halloween 4. 

The film does reference the explosion by having burn scars on Loomis’ face and hands, he also walks with a limp, but otherwise he’s doing fine. As is Michael Myers, who apparently has the ability to regenerate his eyes; at the end of Halloween II his eyes were shot out by Laurie. Continuity has never been the strong suit of any horror franchise, especially if it gets in the way of making a profit. We clearly saw Michael Myers blinded and burnt to a crisp at the end of Halloween II, but thanks to the magic of the movies (and ticket sales) he is alive and in the best shape he’s ever been; some how he’s managed to bulk up, despite being in a coma for ten years.

I mentioned before that Halloween 4 is the best of all the sequels and that is largely due to two things:

1)      The silliness is kept down to a bare minimum; it exists, but it’s not nearly as prevalent as it is in other horror sequels. The characters don’t wander down dark alleys, asking, “Who’s there?” At one point, the heroine Rachel is looking for Jamie and wanders into a junkyard. She’s sees a shape heading her way and rather than asking useless questions, she instead runs away. It turns out to be a false alarm as the shape is a prankster dressed up like Michael Myers.  The only head slapping moment is when Rachel and Jamie are running up a flight of stairs and Rachel turns around and screams, “Why don’t you leave us alone?”  As if somehow Michael will realize the error of his ways, apologize for being mean, and then go straight on home. On top of that, Rachel gives away their location.  Other than this blooper, the characters behave in a pretty consistent manner. There’s (thankfully) no scene in which two random characters decide to have sex in the least likely of places;   Halloween II has a scene in which a curvaceous nurse and an ambulance driver decide to get it on in a hot tub inside the hospital. And not surprisingly, they both meet a rather untimely and fairly grisly end. The nurse gets her face scalded off. There is a mild sex scene between two characters, but it occurs inside a well furnished house, and is promptly interrupted by the arrival of the town sheriff (who is the woman’s father). It’s played for laughs and only lasts for a few seconds.

2)      An attempt at character development. 

      The characters of Rachel and Jamie are far more complex than the genre dictates, but more importantly they are likable. You genuinely feel for Jamie when she is getting picked on by school mates, because her uncle is the town Boogeyman. Rachel genuinely loves her adopted sister Jamie, but kind of resents having to watch her all the time.  Her social life is constantly put on hold, because the burden of watching Jamie usually falls on her shoulders. However, as the film progresses it is pretty clear that Rachel would die for Jamie.  She constantly puts her life at risk to protect Jamie from Michael Myers.   Both are relatable characters and the actresses do a fine job of bringing them to life. The actress who plays Rachel (Ellie Cornell) has a natural look to her which gives the film an air of credibility. She’s attractive, but not overwhelming pretty, unlike the supermodels that tend to dominate most horror films today. Danielle Harris is extremely good as Jamie, odd considering that she was a child actress at the time and this was her first major film.  The Jamie/Rachel dynamic is the heart of the story; the film is at its best when it focuses on them.

The character of Sam Loomis is what gives the Halloween films a slight edge over the other horror franchises made during the same period; he is obsessed with destroying Michael Myers, but also adopts a very gentle approach when the two meet face to face.  When he meets up with Michael in a gas station he implores him not to go to Haddonfield and to leave those people in peace. He also adds, “If you want another victim, take me!”  Of course, his pleas fall on deaf ears and Michael heads to Haddonfield any ways. It’s interesting to note that Michael never goes after Dr. Loomis directly. The scene in the gas station is a great example, Loomis is ripe for the picking, but Michael never approaches him. The only time Loomis gets attacked is when he stands in Michael’s way. This is where having a veteran actor like Donald Pleasence pays off, because despite how silly the story might get, he brings a lot of dramatic weight and dignity to the role.  If a serious actor like Pleasence thinks the situation is dangerous, then chances are the audience will too.

In the first film, Pleasence sells the film’s premise with a memorable monologue:

I met him, fifteen years ago. I was told there was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong. I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face and, the blackest eyes... the devil’s eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... evil. 

While Loomis is slightly batty, he is wise enough to know he can’t take on Michael by himself and alerts the Haddonfield police.  Thankfully, the police take his warnings seriously and send squad cars out to the patrol the area. In most horror films from that period the law was either incompetent or nonexistent. In the Friday the 13^th series, the law (with the exception of Friday the 13^th Part VI: Jason Lives) was usually nowhere to be seen, except in small patches. In the first two films, there is a brief scene in which a patrolman shows up and serves up a warning to the teenagers, which gets promptly ignored.  Other than that, the teenagers are by themselves and picked off one by one. In Halloween 4, the town sheriff is fairly competent and does the right things, but even that is not enough to stop Michael Myers.  Loomis is essentially the Dr. Van Helsing of the series - a thorough expert on Michael Myers and is completely obsessed at stopping him, no matter the costs.

There are other nice touches in Halloween 4 that would I like to comment on, before I get to its biggest flaw:

1)      The specter of Michael Myers still haunts Haddonfield. In most horror film sequels, the characters develop a sense of amnesia and seem to forget all the horrible things that happened to their community years ago. In Friday the 13^th-The Final Chapter, the heroine’s family has lived near Camp Crystal Lake all their lives, but yet has never heard of Jason Voorhees.  In Halloween 4, Michael Myers is still very much a part of Haddonfield, especially around Halloween. As a prank, teenagers dress up as Mike Myers to scare one another and random citizens. The house Michael grew up in still stands and is thought to be haunted by the locals.  Jamie is teased by her classmates, because her uncle is the town Boogeyman. Even though the Haddonfield murders happened a decade ago, the town is still very much haunted by them.    

2)      The vigilantes.

      Chances are if there was an escaped killer lurking about your hometown, most people would opt to stay indoors and lock their doors and windows. However, there would probably be a small crowd who would arm themselves, take the law into their own hands, and hunt down the killer. In Halloween 4, local bar owner Earl gathers up all his redneck buddies and they proceed to hunt down Michael, hoping to get to him before he can take another life. However, as is the case with most vigilantes, they cause more trouble than good.  Earl and his men are bit on edge, and at one point their hear rustling come from the bushes and fire away, adopting the whole “shoot first-ask questions” later mentality. Unfortunately, the man they gun down is the local town drunk, Ted Hollister, who was urinating behind the bushes. Earl tries to deflect blame by yelling at one of his men, “You dumb son of a bitch. You said you saw Myers.”  Earl and his lackeys prove to be rather ineffectual against Michael as well; he sneaks up behind them (while they are standing on the pack of moving pickup truck) and proceeds to kill them one by one.  

The biggest flaw of Halloween 4 is, unfortunately, Michael Myers himself. In the first Halloween, Michael Myers was a fairly average sized male who was very slow and methodically in the way he stalked his victims. In fact, the main reason the first Halloween is so effective is that is slowly builds to the violence at the film’s end.  You know the characters are going to get it, but you don’t know when.  The body count is relatively low (five total) and the gore is kept to an absolute minimum. The interesting thing about Michael is that he is, in fact, very much a kid trapped inside a man’s body.  In his excellent book Cult Movies, Danny Peary writes:

               I think Michael is an incredibly interesting character, not the typical vengeful movie psycho. Carpenter defines him as Evil itself (the real boogeyman), but I don’t believe he goes around killing people because he is evil. Insane, yes; evil, no. There is still a little boy inside the man’s body, and everything he does is part of a game. In fact, his activities are less suited for Halloween than “Mischief Night” (the night after Halloween “celebrated” in many American towns when kids play dirty tricks on their neighbors). He has fun scaring characters before he kills them, or teasing them by making noises, or jumping out of closets. The scariest moment is when Michael drives past Laurie, Annie, and Lynda and stops for a moment. He could kill any of these people any time he wants to, but he prefers to hide behind bushes and in closets, peer into windows, or, as in the case with Annie, play tricks with her car door.

One of the more memorable moments in the first Halloween is after Michael stabs Bob, the camera lingers on him in a long shot as he stares at Bob in a most curious manner and slowly tilts his head to the side.  By the time of Halloween 4, such nuances got thrown out the window in favor of a more one dimensional, lumbering giant. The irony is that while most slasher films took their cue from Halloween, the Halloween sequels took their cue from the many rip offs that dominated the 80s.  The Michael Myers in Halloween 4 has more in common with Jason Voorhees than he does with the Michael Myers seen in the original film.  Between Halloween II and Halloween 4 Michael has somehow bulked up and increased in height, and completely lacks the grace that defined his characters movements in the first film. No longer is he a shadow in the background, but rather a super human brute who dominates the proceedings.

In the original film the bloodshed and the violence was implied, whereas the sequels the gore factor increased greatly and the violence started to get ridiculously over the top. For instance, there is a scene in Halloween 4 in which Michael impales a curvaceous blonde girl with a rifle with very little effort.

In another scene, his hand comes crashing through a pick up truck window and proceeds to rip off Earl’s head. Granted, the gore in Halloween 4 isn’t as gruesome as it is in present horror films, but it’s still there. While many horror fans applaud the gore scenes, I find them rather redundant and boring; to me gore diffuses the tension, rather than adds to it.  When Michael rips off Earl’s head, it makes me cry out, “Oh! Come on,” rather than, “OH MY GOD!”  If the execution is poor, gore scenes can be incredibly laughable. In the Lucio Fulci film The Beyond there is a scene in which an idiot is attacked by tarantulas that proceed to rip his face apart. This sounds disgusting, but because of Fulci’s inept direction it becomes a laugh riot. For one, despite walking on a wooden floor, it sounds like the Tarantula’s are walking on potato chips, and secondly, despite having his face torn apart, the guy doesn’t seem to be in any pain. At one point he gets his eye ripped off and mere says, “OH NO!” It’s a scene that lingers on and on, and doesn’t necessarily add to the overall narrative, though Fulci films rarely make any sense.

The other aspect I can’t stand about the Halloween sequels (not just part 4) is the idea that Michael Myers hunts down his next blood relative. In Halloween II, it was revealed that Laurie Strode is Michael Myers’ sister.  This storyline was added to give Michael motivation for going after Laurie, but otherwise it added nothing to the overall narrative.  When Halloween 4 rolled along, the filmmakers couldn’t get Jamie Lee Curtis to reprise her role as Laurie, so they changed the premise from Michael Myers stalks his sister to Michael Myers stalks his niece.  I absolutely hate both story lines, because they take the idea of chance out of the equation.  In Halloween, Laurie was a random person Michael encountered and proceeded to stalk her and her friends; it was a chance encounter that leads to the death of three teenagers.  What makes the film so frightening is the idea that this could happen to anyone in any town. Laurie just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and as a result she finds herself fighting for her life at the film’s end. It is also through chance that Loomis spots the car Michael stolen, sees children fleeing from a house, and arrives in the nick of time to save Laurie.  However, by making Michael and Laurie siblings this idea of chance goes tossed out of the window in favor of the idea that fate is what brought the two together.  In Halloween 4, Michael has waited patiently for ten years, so he can escape and stalk his poor niece.  This also presents the problem of “How does Michael know he has a niece?” and Halloween 4 never really answers that question; in Halloween 5 it is revealed that the two share a psychic link (when it is convenient for the plot). 

*Spoiler*

I especially loathe the twist ending in which Jamie turns evil and attacks her stepmother with a knife, thus implying that she will take Michael Myers place. There are many fans that like this ending, because how it parallels the first Halloween, but it’s absolutely needless and unoriginal. For one, Friday the 13^th: The Final Chapter sports a similar twist ending, in which it is implied that Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman) might have not survived the ordeal of killing Jason with his sanity intact. In Friday the 13^th: The New Beginning this isn’t so much as implied as  it is explicit; we see Tommy wearing Jason’s mask and clutching a knife as the film’s heroine is oblivious to her soon to be demise. In Halloween 5 this idea of Jamie being Michael’s heir apparent is completely dropped and instead she spends a good deal of the film mute and recovering in a hospital. Secondly, it’s seemed to a common theme amongst horror films of the 80s to end on a rather downbeat note, just when you thought the killer was defeated, he would come back for one more scare. It’s a cliché that got rather tiresome as the decade wore on and seeing a cute girl turn evil is just a bit too much. And Pleasence shouting, “NOOOO!” in slow motion doesn’t really help matters.

I have love/hate relationship with Halloween 4. I like the characters of Jamie and Rachel, as well a few other touches by the filmmakers. It’s still a step above the majority of the slasher films of that decade, and certainly a masterpiece compared to the dreadful sequels that followed, but unfortunately I find the character of Michael to be rather lifeless and uninteresting. He’s no longer the Michael Myers of the first film, but rather a Jason rip off.  

Cast: Donald Pleasence (Dr. Loomis), Danielle Harris (Jamie), Ellie Cornell (Rachel), George P. Wilbur (Michael Myers), Beau Starr (Sheriff Meeker), Sasha Jensen (Brady), Kathleen Kinmont (Kelly Meeker), Michael Pataki (Dr. Hoffman), Gene Ross (Earl), Carmen Filpi (Rev. Jackson P. Sayer).

Director: Dwight H. Little